A recent report giving a conditional stamp of approval to Canada’s guidelines for radiofrequency waves failed to give enough weight to research suggesting a link between wireless devices and cancer.
The two men both independently reviewed the findings of the Royal Society of Canada, who released a report looking at existing Health Canada guidelines governing safe radiofrequency emissions from cellphones, WiFi equipment, cellular towers and other wireless technology.
The scientists took exception to the report, which concluded the current guidelines were adequate but could benefit from more research.
Dr. Anthony Miller, Professor Emeritus at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, said the Royal Society panel didn’t go far enough in its recommendations.
Miller contended the panel didn’t have the proper time or resources to devote to a thorough review of scientific data.
With the exploding amounts of data, search engines will not always work reliably in the age of Big Data. A Danish researcher has set out to find new methods of rescuing our search engines.
At a young age, Rasmus Pagh, now a professor at the IT University in Copenhagen, discovered that some searches get so heavy with data that the users become impatient waiting for the search result. This prompted him to start looking for smarter ways of searching for information online.
Today, a common alternative to a search engine seeping through every piece of data in the database is to base the search on random samples. The search methods used by Google, Facebook, insurance databases and corporate marketing departments are nowhere near as effective as they might appear on the surface. There are actually no guarantees that you will find everything you searched for.
This is the problem that Pagh has now set out to solve. He has attracted international attention with his research into Big Data – the huge amounts of data that researchers, businesses and authorities have had access to in recent years – and the special algorithms used for searching in these vast piles of data.
New research has revealed that exposure to common family problems during childhood and early adolescence affects brain development, which could lead to mental health issues in later life. The study used brain imaging technology to scan teenagers aged 17-19.
It found that those who experienced mild to moderate family difficulties between birth and 11 years of age had developed a smaller cerebellum, an area of the brain associated with skill learning, stress regulation and sensory-motor control. The researchers also suggest that a smaller cerebellum may be a risk indicator of psychiatric disease later in life, as it is consistently found to be smaller in virtually all psychiatric illnesses.
New research has revealed that exposure to common family problems during childhood and early adolescence affects brain development, which could lead to mental health issues in later life.
The study led by Dr Nicholas Walsh, lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of East Anglia (UEA), used brain imaging technology to scan teenagers aged 17-19.
Read more: Family problems experienced in childhood affect brain development
Businesses that make greater use - i.e. collection, analysis and deployment - of online customer data are 8% more productive as a result, according to a new report.
Inside the Datavores, released by innovation charity Nesta, explored the effect of data and online analytics on firm performance. The findings were based on surveys on online data practices and IT employment, combined with data on financial performance.
Read more: Businesses using customer data more productive and more profitable
Shaping of sound by our mouths leaves an acoustic trail the brain can follow, say researchers.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco show in a new study - published in the journal Science - that the shaping of sound by our mouths leaves "an acoustic trail" that the brain follows.
Scientists have known for some time that it is the superior temporal gyrus (STG; also known as "Wernike's area") where speech sounds are interpreted. But not much has been known about how the brain actually processes speech.
To investigate this, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) researchers placed neural recording devices directly onto the surface of the brains of six patients who were undergoing epilepsy surgery. This allowed the researchers to capture very rapid changes in the brain.
